July 14th: the longest flight ever ?

[redbird300]

For some strange reason, Erwin and myself have decided to try to attack the FAI world record for the longest duration flight with an electrical RC heli. Well, we’re simply weirdo’s in fact, that should be enough as an excuse to try this. Call us “helifreaks” if you like, lol.

Here’s the actual FAI world record “F5 Open duration electrical helicopter”:




This was done with a heavily modified Henseleit TDR, but as we all know that’s not the perfect heli for extremely slow flying. So we used a very different approach.

The date of our attempt will be Saturday July 14, weather permitting. If the conditions would be very bad, we’ll organize another attempt in a near future.

It will happen at our local flying club in Belgium, geographic coordinates 50° 51' 45 N en 03° 57' 10 E.

There will be 3 officials of the Royal Belgian Aero Club present, who are approved by the FAI. Approval as a world record, in case of a successful attempt, will take a few months though. First as a national record, and only after that as a world record.

We won’t tell you any technical details of the heli for now, for obvious reasons. Anyway, it flies, lol. Well, barely in fact. But it stays in the air for a very long time. We hope to end somewhere between an hour and a half and two hours. The key is of course extremely low weight, very low RPMs and lots of lipos. For your eyes only (so please don’t tell anyone else) we’ll publish a first pic, revealing some details…



We will reveal even more details of the heli in the next days.

We will keep you posted during the attempt itself, Erwin will post updates from the field on the 14th as the attempt goes on, like a few pics and news. Every 15 minutes or so. The attempt will start at 14.00 hours local time (GMT+2). Meaning that it will be 13.00 hours (1.00 PM) in London, and 8.00 AM in New York or 5.00 AM in Los Angeles.

We will record the whole flight, and publish it on Youtube afterwards, so prepare your beers and bags full of popcorn, this will make a very, very long and extremely boring vid. Hopefully.

Raf & Erwin.

[jperkosk]

Wow, I'm impressed with the detail level on the photo

Good luck, guys, will keep the fingers crossed, can't have the record stay in Germany, can we now?

How will you fly it for 2 hours, Raf, will you have a relief co-pilot (or 2)?

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by jperkosk

Wow, I'm impressed with the detail level on the photo

Good luck, guys, will keep the fingers crossed, can't have the record stay in Germany, can we now?

How will you fly it for 2 hours, Raf, will you have a relief co-pilot (or 2)?

As we will claim the record towards the FAI as a team, not an individual, Erwin is allowed to act as a co-pilot. But he isn't very fond of doing that, as I did all the testing, and got used to the heli which has very strange flying characteristics to say the least, lol. So I'll have a few coffees and a large can of Redbull, and do the flight alone.

[Tomstoy2]

+1!

Good luck guys! I'm rootin for ya!!!

[Danny_Swe]

Awesome! Can't wait to see more details of the heli

Skickat från min LT26i via Tapatalk 2

[comatosed]

Really interesting project, good luck guys. Looking forward to seeing more details on this heli.

[copterboy]

+1 Good Luck Guys (not that you should need it!!). Will wait to hear the news we have a new world record holder

[ragge1]

+1 Good Luck Guys

[dayshaddow]

good luck

[redbird300]

Weather prediction for Saturday: up to 5 Bft. and lots of rain.
We'll need to find another date, I guess.

And I know a few other guys who might have a small problem also: there's the 3D Masters this weekend in Venlo.

Anybody mentioned RC ducks or submarines ?

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by redbird300

Anybody mentioned RC ducks or submarines ?

After some further investigation:



"Virginia Class Attack Electric RC Submarine with 3 Dimensional Control System and full function remote control you can go forward, backward, forward left, forward right, backward left, backward right, spin right, spin left, submerge, emerge and perform multiple other functions that normal submarines can't dream of doing. Measures about 14.5 inches long and is great for the pool, bathtub, or lakes

Combine that with 3 high powered motors and you can do a figure 8 maneuver called Tornado Dashing, and you can also do progressive rolling among others. This remote control (RC) submarines is ready to run right out of the box for both day and night piloting. For night driving this submarine comes equipped with headlights. Make sure to invite your friends so that you can race and run 2 of these submarines at a time. If you stop operating, or if the radio waves fail to reach the rc submarine, the safety system will automatically bring the submarine to the surface.

The hull on this rc submarine is water-tight and the transmitter is water-resistant, so there is no need to worry if it gets splashed! This RC submarine is a great toy and makes a cool gift for people of all ages."

[Chop1980]

Good luck on the record! Can't wait to see the video, no matter how boring, lol.


Sent using TapaTalk app.

[sutty]

How's the weather looking now Raf. Can't wait to hear some more details. Good luck with the weather and anything else that you might need to go your way.

Cheers

Sutty

[redbird300]

Originally Posted by sutty

How's the weather looking now Raf. Can't wait to hear some more details. Good luck with the weather and anything else that you might need to go your way.

Cheers

Sutty

Saturday: wind = 4-5 Bft. and lots of rain.

You'll get a lot of details, but preferably after the (succesful) attempt, I'm sure you understand buddy. The weather is the only thing holding us back now. If we can't do it, we'll have another go August 4th or 11th.
Meanwhile, we are having some local newspapers and TV stations that become interested, which is nice, but worth nothing if the weather doesn't change.

[sutty]

lol, TV, I'd be lucky if I could move the collecive up I'd be so nervous. Mmmh, if indeed it has collective. Might be set at the most efficient angle for the blade design, and you have a super shallow throttle curve around hover. Who knows. Muhaha. All these things and more will be revealed during the next installment of Raf's great duration flight experiment.

Good luck buddy.

Cheers

Sutty

[jperkosk]

Good luck Raf with the weather, it just may right itself all of the sudden, you never know

On the other hand some design parameters are obvious, so I'll venture a couple of guesses here: 600 frame stretched to at least 800, fbl, CP set just above the hovering range, asymmetrical blades, with the 12S setup and the motor geared down from almost full (90-95%) throttle to the final HS of about 800 RPM. Was thinking multi-blade setup, but that adds a lot of weight, so it has to be a standard 2-blade rotor.

Please don't comment on it now, I just want to compare my guess to the final specs after the record has been broken

[redbird300]

You're not that far from the truth Jerry, as for some of the specs at least. Just think lighter and smaller, there's an optimum between size and flight time, as larger helis weigh too much, blades need to be stiffer for example, which makes them proportionally heavier, and the larger disc area can't compensate for the added efficiency anymore (versus the total added weight). And the forces at low RPMs are so weak that you don't need a strong heli at all, reason why a 600 frame, no matter which one, is largely overkill. Enough said, lol.
The actual world record holder believed that "larger is better" statement, and worked up to the 6 kg FAI limit. We don't even reach half that weight, and get much longer flighttimes anyway.... Strange things start to happen when building a heli at these limits, you need to forget some of your previous experiences, I learned a lot from these experiments. It's like when Einstein started thinking about what happened at the speed of light, and his whole universe changed, lol.

[redbird300]

We just decided, given the (bad) weather predictions, to set a new date for the record attempt: August 4th. Sooner isn't possible, as too many people are involved.

[Tomstoy2]

Good luck, my friend, really rootin' for you! Can't wait to see the vid. Hope one of you gets his hands on a good camera, hd? Your son does a damn fine job as camera man, Maybe it's time to get that boy a Nex7 of his own, ( under condition you can borrow it from time to time, of course ), and let his creativity loose.

Speaking of records, there's a vid floating out of Russia about some outfit that did a 1:40 flight with a multirotor. Whether it's real or another hoax, ( remember the mutirotor with a machine gun? ), remains to be seen.

[redbird300]

Countdown for lift off has started: we hope to be in the air in exactly 24 hours from now. The weather doesn't look very promising, but we'll see. The decision has been taken to make an officical attempt tomorrow, no going back now.